


As changes the sky

by wearwind



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Allura ending, Canon Keith & Shiro bond, Canon until the Epilogue, Curtis who, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, in a VERY literal sense, the post-canon Sheith we deserve
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-21 09:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17041622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearwind/pseuds/wearwind
Summary: A Black Paladin is the guardian of the sky spirit. In flight, in motion, free of the confines and contours, ever-changing and brilliant like the sun.So is his love. Any love.Or: the post-canon Sheith where the line between friendship and romantic love is being toed, because we goddamn deserve it. Same universe as theWhite Paladin. These premises are kept strictly Curtis-free.





	1. We all won and lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AryaTred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AryaTred/gifts).



> _we change as changes the sky_  
>  seamlessly the clouds pass away;  
> in hazy contours of truth  
> the lines are confined to a mind –  
> I see the mist of your breath  
> reform our shapes

Allura is gone.

The finality of it hits Keith like a slap, repetitively, each time he looks at Lance’s empty face with glowing Altean markings. They look so out of place, their bright blue bringing out the deep shadows under his eyes. Lance doesn’t sleep, and Keith really can’t help, much as he wants to; there is nothing to say. Everything Allura could have said, everything she could have done, she had. What she could not was clear enough in their psychic link, binding the paladins all together in her final moments, clearer and brighter than Keith’s memories of the dreamscape have ever been: _love. Regret. Decisiveness. Duty._

Pure Allura, always.

Keith’s first instinct to hate her for leaving, but all too soon realises the hypocrisy of it. At least Allura’s sacrifice saved the entire universe – Keith has been willing to die for far less.

(The universe she’s saved contains Shiro within it. Once that realisation sets, his frustration gives way to mourning.)

In the weeks that follow, the paladins hover over Lance like the world’s most overpowered set of helicopter mums. Hunk’s cupcakes soon begin to pile on every paladin-frequented surface, much to the joy of the rest of the Atlas’ crew; Pidge, in the act of ultimate self-sacrifice, wordlessly drops _Killbot Phantasm I: Journey to the Depths of the Demonsphere_ in the middle of Lance’s empty bedroom (having picked the lock first). Keith rolls his eyes at them, until Pidge calls him out on his own Attempts to Be Nice – offering a knife throwing competition really seems like a good idea at the time. His mum and Kolivan are just as perplexed about Lance’s reaction as he is. He tries to keep his distance after that, but judging by Pidge’s dirty looks, he is just as complicit in the hovering as her.    

Predictably, Shiro is the worst. He hangs around the Red Lion as much as his captain status can allow him, and then some more; and in a vain attempt to hide it, he pesters the four of them equally. At least his excuses are valid enough, since the Balmeran intervention left unexplainable oddities in both the Atlas and the lions. Day by day, they run the tests within the lions’ collective consciousness, trying to trace the Atlas connection back to the source.

And it’s both heartwrenching and cathartic to feel their grief together, mirrored in each other, a gaping hole where the fifth lion should have been.

A tether, unbound, spinning free. Voltron no more.

They don’t say a word when they leave the lions, but Pidge’s nose is vengefully red, and Hunk is openly weeping. And Lance –

Keith knows. He _knows._ Each paladin was forced to lose something in the end, and for Lance the universe had waited until the last day of the war. But to win against an insurmountable threat, to claim victory, only to realise that the price was the life of their –

Of their –

Keith doesn’t think it. He’s not a man of many words. But he knows what the universe looks like without Shiro, and it’s not a universe at all.

So he tries hard to give Lance space.


	2. Reform Voltron

Three days after they stopped the end of all existence, Keith goes back to his room on the Atlas only to find Shiro in it.

He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his pristine uniform unbuttoned, shoulders falling forward in an exhausted slouch. His hair covers his eyes; ashen-grey eyebrows against the milk-white buzzcut. Hair of a survivor, twice over.

Keith closes the door behind him, and Shiro straightens up at the sound, a relieved smile lighting up his scarred features. “Keith.”

“Everything all right?” he says instead of greeting. Shiro nods.

“Actually, I wanted to check on you. I know you’ve been taking Allura’s – passing pretty hard.”

“I’m not the one you should be having this talk with.”

“I’m making my way down that list,” says Shiro wryly, and Keith’s lips twitch at that odd mixture of bleak humour and sadness in his voice. “But I wanted to make sure you’re not being too hard on yourself. There is nothing any of us could have done.”

“Tell Allura what to do? Not in this reality,” Keith says and drops next to him on the bed, unbuttoning his own jacket. Shiro’s shoulders quiver slightly against his, half chuckle, half sigh.

“Or any other.”

“We were her paladins,” he says quietly, leaning into Shiro’s warmth. “She told us who we were meant to be. Gave us purpose. Gave _me_ Red. And when you were gone – we wouldn’t’ve survived without her, Shiro. I wouldn’t’ve been a leader without her.”

“Neither would I,” Shiro says, and the room falls silent.

After a long moment, Keith finds his words. “Has anyone done this check-in back at you?”

Shiro scoffs, as if the thought were ridiculous, and that’s Keith’s answer right there. He doesn’t push, waiting for the thoughts to crystallise in Shiro’s mind, for the thoughts to come out as words; _patience yields focus._ He’s got time.

With a quiet _pop,_ Kosmo materialises in the corner, and then with another _pop_ the mattress creaks under the combined weight of two humans and a space wolf. Shiro lets out a startled _oomph_ when Kosmo’s head lands on his lap, most of his weight crushing Keith into the bed. He flails, but the wolf is immovable. “Down, Kosmo! Down!”

Shiro’s tired eyes twinkle. “He might need some more training.”

“He’s trained fine, he’s just being moody!” Keith protests, and Kosmo lets out a questioning whine, but does not move his head away from Shiro’s lap – angling his ears for a scratch. Shiro obliges easily. “Now this is reinforcing bad behaviour.”

“I’m sure his fine training can withstand it.”

Keith scoffs. He’s crushed under Kosmo’s weight, pushed tight against Shiro’s human arm, and the warmth envelops him from all directions – heavy, grounding, safe.

He desperately wishes Shiro feels the same.  

“I – wanted to make sure you don’t feel like you’ve failed as a leader, somehow,” Shiro says softly, his voice weighed down by something else than just Kosmo’s warm head. “It was her decision. The Blue Lion will choose her successor once the time is right, but Voltron did exactly what it was meant to do. It saved the universe. You’ve all done well.”

Keith lets out a deep breath. “We’ve done well.”

“Keith.”

“ _We,_ ” he repeats, stubbornly. Shiro inclines his head ever so slightly, a small, heartbreaking smile tugging at his lip. “You _know_ the Black Lion would take you back in a heartbeat. Voltron is gone now, but doesn’t _need to be,_ Shiro –”

He can feel it, the exact moment Shiro goes still and rigid against him. “Keith, no.”

“Why not?” he demands, and Shiro shakes his head stiffly. His fingers still in Kosmo’s fur.

“I’m not a paladin anymore. I’m the Captain.”

“Oh bullsh-”

“ _Keith._ ”

“What would be wrong with that?!” He’s aware that his tone is rising, the warmth on his cheeks heating up, and but that one last _Keith_ was one too many. “Allura just won us this war, but you’re going to tell me that we won’t need Voltron anymore? All in the universe is good now? Why don’t you just come _back –_ ”

“I’m not going to use her death like this!”

The yell is pained, raw. Keith’s throat constricts.

Kosmo drops to the floor, raising his snout at them in clear concern. His warmth and weight are gone, evaporated from his embrace along with the promise of _all good._

“No-one – Shiro, listen – no-one would _ever think that –_ ”

“I’m not getting back into the Black Lion,” the Captain says, and Keith _refuses_ to stand to attention at that voice, not when it hurts his insides so much to hear it. “Blue will have to choose another paladin.”

Keith turns to face him. Shiro’s arms are crossed on his chest so tightly and protectively that he _needs_ to pry them out. His fingers close on his forearms, one warm through the uniform, the other cold and metal. “Why are you so afraid of it?!”

“I’m – I – Keith, _stop._ ”

“No. I know you’ve thought about this. And _you_ know this is where you belong, I’ve only ever known Black because of you –”

“You would put Lance back in Blue?”

Keith halts.

“I did think about it,” Shiro says, voice so quiet Keith needs to strain his ears to understand. “That’s all I wanted for a long time. But you know what that would be, Keith? Selfish. That would be selfish.”

Keith lowers his head silently. _Lance in Blue._

_Lance, sitting where she died._

“I felt you through Atlas. You, Lance, Pidge, Hunk, Allura… I – it was good to be with you again.” Shiro’s voice thickens, and Keith tightens his fingers on his arms again. “But she was right. The world doesn’t need Voltron anymore. An era of peace doesn’t need its problems solved by a weapon.”

Almost violently, Keith pulls him towards his own chest; and suddenly his arms are filled with a heavy weight, angular where the shoulder stump meets the metal, chilled where the Altean arm extends away from the body. He’s pushed back to the bed, but he’s holding on with an iron embrace, desperate not to let him slip away, not any strand of that sadness and loneliness to escape.

He would crush it.

“You don’t need to ride the lion to be their paladin. You’ve always been there with us. You always will.”

Shiro fights it for a splinter of a second, tight and solid and tense against him. “Keith –”

“ _Always,”_ he repeats, his voice fiery. “I don’t care if you think you’re not a part of Voltron anymore, because you can’t just – stop. You’ll always be one of us.”

“I’m not –”

 _“_ Just like Alfor and the other paladins. Just like Allura. _Always._ ”

_I’ll never give up on you._

Shiro’s chin is lodged over his shoulder, pressing tightly. His jaw muscles move as if he wanted to say something, protest, say something else that was the Captain and not the Shiro Keith knew so well that his hurt cut like a Marmoran blade, and deeper. _Away, in the Atlas, alone_ –

And then he exhales; and with that exhale he goes boneless, completely limp against Keith’s chest, two hundred pounds of dead weight pressing him into the mattress.

Keith closes his eyes.

_Just for now. Please, universe, Galra gods, Allura, if you’re in there, please let me have this for now._

_Just a moment longer, until I’m out of breath._

_Just a moment._

Someone knocks of the door, and they both jump; the doors open and then immediately close again. Keith flops back; Shiro stirs against him, but Keith just tightens his embrace. “Please stay.”

“I have to go,” says Shiro weakly, but then lets out a surprised _oomph_ – and suddenly Keith is knocked into the mattress not only by Shiro, but the full furry weight of the space wolf snapping to existence just above the two of them. He gasps for breath.

“Kosmo!”

Shiro’s chest trembles against his in silent breathless laughter. “Still think he’s well trained?”

 _Yes,_ Keith thinks, mind clouded with the breathlessness and relief at hearing him laugh. _As long as he keeps you there._

_Just one more moment._

_The universe may not need a weapon anymore, but it sure as hell still needs Voltron._


	3. Enough

“So,” says Lance, clearing his throat awkwardly as the rest of the Atlas crew leaves the comm room. Keith turns towards him, cracking a small smile. It does nothing to alieve the permanent crease that has lodged itself in between Lance’s eyebrows from the day Allura died, nor lighten up his defeated, empty eyes; nothing can. But at least it serves as enough of an encouragement that Lance shuffles towards him, dropping on the chair on his right hand side. _Old habits die hard._ “Is Shiro okay?”

Keith tenses up immediately. “What happened?”

“No idea, dude. I’m asking you.”

“Oh. Sure. Why?”

Lance shrugs, his shoulders coming up to his ears and barely going down as he leans against the table. “He’s been… supportive. Classic Shiro, you know? He was the one to call my family and tell them what happened. I probably should’ve done that, but…” Lance trails off for a moment. “He broke the news to Coran.”

He squeezes his eyelids shut, and Keith’s gaze locks onto the blue Altean marking on his cheeks. Allura’s markings. He doesn’t envy Lance the burden of having to look Coran in the eye while bearing them.

Of course someone had to talk to Coran.

Of course no-one knew how, so Shiro did it.

Of course Lance thinks it should’ve been him instead. There, with Coran – and, because he is the same Lance that wanted to give away his lion, that thought he wasn’t good enough – there with Allura.

Grief rises in his chest, heavy and bitter with a mounting feeling of injustice. They’ve won. The war is over. No-one should have to carry the burden of their dead girlfriend’s last wish permanently etched into his skin.

As if feeling his attention on his markings, Lance rubs his eyes; fake gesture of real exhaustion. His fingers press the blue Altean pigment deep into his cheekbones. “What I’m saying is, he’s done all my dirty work. Kinda nice, after he made us do all those dishes in the Castle of Lions. But I wanted to talk to you yesterday, and I – uh –”

“You walked in on us,” deadpans Keith. And it is the testament of Lance’s miserable state that this offering to be the butt of his joke passes unused.

“Yeah. So – I know you two are private and all, but is he okay?”

Suddenly, Keith feels a rush of affection towards his right hand man. No-one had asked Shiro that question after Allura’s death. It figures that it would be the person with the most right to focus on his own grief.

“He’s hurting, Lance. We all are. But you know that if you told him it’s your fault for not telling Coran on your own? He’s just give you more dishwasher duty.”

Lance snorts. “At least I don’t have to scrape food goo off the walls here.” He taps the Altean markings absent-mindedly, and when he speaks next, his voice sounds slightly less dead.  “She’s – she’s meant different things to all of us, right? I loved – I _love_ her, and you guys do too? But she was even more than that. Her and Shiro, they both took responsibility for stuff we couldn’t do. Organised, and planned, and strategized, and was the head of the Coalition, and… ”

_And now he’s on his own._

“He just looked so sad yesterday,” finishes Lance lamely. “If there’s anything I can do… He’s Team Voltron. We’re supposed to help each other. Not just… me.”

Keith reaches out and clasps his hand on Lance’s shoulder. “You really are as dumb as you’ve always been, huh?”

The insult, of all things, has some of his old goofy energy flickering back to life for a moment. “And you’re just as edgy, emo dude.”

Keith pretends to ignore him, even as his lips twitch at this pale shadow of their early-onset bickering. “Just talk to him. Since I’ve been in Black… I’ve started getting it. Shiro and – Allura, they always needed us as much as we needed them.”

“Yeah,” Lance murmurs, sinking into the seat. His eyes go glossy, staring down into the well of raw memory. “They always did. And they always ended up saving us.”

Keith doesn’t _want_ to get it, but he gets it. Loving like that means always looking up, searching for the best parts of himself to offer; to be worthy of being saved, and to be enough to save in return. With a blade, with a shoulder, with self-sacrifice, as many times as it takes.

And when the Black Lion returned empty –

It was the devastation of _not being enough_ that had broken him.

“Talk to him,” he says, his own voice rawer than he would have liked. “It’s like inside the Voltron consciousness. It’s the same grief, in all of us. You, me, Shiro. And… Lance?”

Lance blinks slowly at the sound of his name. “Huh?”

“You deserved her,” he says, fiery and decisive, because he’s right, he knows it in his bones. “You were enough. And you are.”

_I’m enough for him, too._

Lance sits there, motionless, his face a mask of blank shock, but Keith's breath catches in his throat as Allura’s markings begin to glow on his cheeks – shining, fluorescent, sun-bright blue.


	4. 4 a.m.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! Have some shameless fluff.

_Bad dream._

When Shiro says it, it’s always sheepish, almost apologetic, one hand reflexively scratching his grown-out buzzcut underside. Something kids have. Just like a regular dream, but a bad one; falling, or feeling lost. That’s his go-to excuse when Keith finds him at the mess at four in the morning, several days in a row.

(Keith also wakes up in the middle of the night, the scrambled _pilot error_ and _the Black Lion’s empty_ and _I love you_ haunting him until he grabs a handful of Kosmo’s fur and teleports in front of Shiro’s door to make sure he’s locking onto the right timeline – until he’s not there. That’s how he keeps venturing out to find him.)

“What kind of dream?”

Shiro turns away from him. His voice does not waver as he speaks, but Keith notices a tremor on his fingers before he squeezes his hands around the edge of the tabletop. “The arena. Haggar. Black’s consciousness. New show each night.”

Keith suspected as much, but still he feels a dull sense of helplessness at the explicit admission. “I’m staying with you tonight. I’ll wake you up when I see you’re having a nightmare.”

“Keith, there’s no point in _both_ of us being exhausted.”

“I don’t need much sleep.”

“Neither do I,” says Shiro pointedly, and Keith just shakes his head.

“Unless you’re kicking me out of the room, I’m staying.”

“And when could I ever stop you?” Shiro snorts into the plastic cup he’s huddling next to the holo, a simple white ration-size portion of steaming coffee. His gaze turns slightly melancholic as he stares into the cup, but then he shakes it off to look back at Keith. “You do what you want. I’m just here to contain the fallout.”

Keith purses his lips, unsure if he’s being scolded or rejected. Shiro catches his expression and shakes his head, a little sadly.

“Sorry. I don’t – _mind_ your company, Keith. I’m just not sure if you’re going to get the result you want. It’s not your responsibility to make me sleep.”

“You’re my responsibility, Shiro,” Keith says simply. For a moment, Shiro looks pensive at that, palms closing around the coffee cup in a reflexive protective gesture; but then he nods, all his features softening into a small smile.

 

“I guess you’re right. You’re mine, too.”

The words reach him, and there’s nothing he didn’t know, but –

They somehow glisten in the air between them. It’s four in the morning and they’re both not looking their best – tousled, tired, drowsy, eyes puffed – but Shiro blushes faintly the second he says it, and whatever Keith was going to say next evaporates at that. He nods, warmth spreading inside his chest. Like he had been the one to take a sip out of Shiro’s godawful coffee.

He sits down next to him. Shiro sets the cup down and nudges it towards his hands, and Keith makes a face. “No.”

“I got better at this.”

“It’s not you, it’s the coffee. Even Hunk couldn’t make that good.”

Shiro shakes his head, but pulls the cup back into his hands. His fingers, both flesh and silver-white Altean metal, clasp gently around the plastic; and Keith thinks of another hand, purple-black, that almost crushed the life of out of him on the crumbling cloning platform. Deadly, terrifying, choking –

The light is dim, and they slowly drift in their quiet reveries, the Earth clock on the side of the counter ticking off minutes as they pass. Shiro rests his back against the wall, the smell of overextracted, bitter coffee surrounding him like a cloud, and it almost seems like he’s dozing off; but he’s still there, fingers curled around his drink like a talisman against nightmares. In the silence of the small hours of the morning, Keith contemplates his life alongside a man who lost so much and killed so many and yet is still too gentle to dent a plastic cup.

In every way that matters, his life, his _heart_ is held between those hands.

_You’re mine._


End file.
